Congressional auditors have found “serious” problems with an Energy Department nonproliferation program to redirect Soviet-era weapons scientists into commercial employment, saying DoE has overstated its accomplishments, paid salaries to Russian scientists who have no weapons expertise and funneled program money to its Global Nuclear Energy Partnership initiative and projects in Iraq and Libya without congressional approval.
Investigators with the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the auditing arm of Congress, also said that while the Russian economy is now booming–and top Russian government officials have told DoE that Russian scientists and research institutions no longer need U.S. financial assistance–DoE officials have rejected a GAO recommendation that they reassess the need for the program, which was launched in the 1990s when Russia was struggling.
In response to those GAO assertions, department officials contended they have recently reassessed the program–known as the Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention (IPP)– which was created to help economically struggling Soviet-era scientists so they did not sell their nuclear or biological weapons expertise to rogue nations such as North Korea. The program enlists U.S. companies to help create commercial enterprises in Russia to hire weapons scientists so they turn to civilian work.
Overall, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the semi-autonomous DoE weapons agency that runs the IPP program, said it agreed with many GAO recommendations to improve management of the program. However, it argued the fundamental need for the program remains intact and its benefits are clear.
But GAO said NNSA estimates of thousands of jobs created under the IPP program were not substantiated by program documents–and were fundamentally suspect because they were based on “good-faith” reporting by U.S. companies and Russian institutes involved in IPP projects.
GAO also said it found many Russian scientists receiving IPP payments did not have proliferation-sensitive weapons expertise, and that some Russian research institutes receiving U.S. cash clearly were not suffering hard times.
“One institute we visited in the Ukraine had recently undergone a $500,000 renovation, complete with a marble foyer and a collection of fine art,” GAO noted in its Dec. 12 report on the IPP program, which it did for Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.
More broadly, GAO said it was disturbed that DoE had not set clear criteria for phasing out IPP projects. The auditors said that–in stark contrast to a State Department program also aimed at helping Soviet-era weapons scientists–DoE had developed no “exit strategy” for determining when scientists and research institutions no longer need financial aid. As a result, GAO found that the IPP program is still giving money to some Russian scientists and institutions that the State Department already has “graduated” from its aid program.
And far from looking at how to wind down the program, GAO said DoE had moved to expand it beyond the bounds set by Congress, which by law limited the IPP program to helping Russian scientists with demonstrated weapons expertise.
“Instead of finding ways to phase out the IPP program in the countries of the former Soviet Union, DoE has recently expanded the program to include new countries and areas as a way to maintain its relevance as a nonproliferation program,” GAO said.
“Specifically DoE recently began providing assistance to scientists in Iraq and Libya. In addition, the IPP program is working with DoE’s Office of Nuclear Energy to develop projects that support the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP)–a DoE-led international effort to expand the use of civilian nuclear power.
“DoE has expanded the IPP program’s efforts into these new areas without a clear mandate from the Congress and has suspended parts of its IPP program guidance for implementing projects in these new areas,” GAO said.
GAO concluded: “Due to the serious nature of these findings, we are recommending that DoE perform a comprehensive reassessment of the IPP program to help the Congress determine whether to continue to fund the program.”
NNSA officials denied they were skirting congressional authority and said they were conducting analyses to improve program management. They also asserted that they were seeking congressional authorization to do IPP projects in Iraq and Libya, but said it was “premature” to set clear guidance on using the IPP program for GNEP-related projects because the GNEP program was still evolving.
The allegations about diversion of IPP money to GNEP, a controversial Bush administration effort to develop nuclear reprocessing and recycling technology in conjunction with Russia and other advanced nuclear nations, is likely to arouse particularly strong criticism from key Democrats in Congress who see GNEP as a expensive boondoggle.
NNSA officials will undoubtedly face tough questions on the GNEP matter at a hearing on the GAO report scheduled for Wednesday by the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s oversight and investigations subcommitee.
GAO said six active or approved IPP projects support GNEP, and some of them do not comport with clear IPP guidelines requiring that projects enlist U.S. companies to develop commercial jobs for Russian weapons scientists. Rather, GAO said, “DoE officials told us that most GNEP-related IPP projects do not have immediate commercial potential, but could attract industry in the future. Furthermore, they said the GNEP-related IPP projects are essentially collaborative research and development efforts between Russian institutes and DoE national laboratories.”
GAO said the projects in Libya and Iraq also did not appear to have commercial prospects, and were launched by DoE at the request of the State Department.
GAO also expressed concern that NNSA was violating internal DoE guidelines for IPP program spending in pursuing projects in Libya. While no more than 35 percent of funding for IPP projects is supposed to be spent at national laboratories for management of IPP projects, GAO found that 97 percent of the money for IPP projects in Libya was actually being spent at DOE labs overseeing those projects.
DoE rejected the GAO’s criticism that it was violating the IPP spending limits at national laboratories, suggesting that GAO was misconstruing the limitation.
In perhaps its most telling criticism, GAO said both Russian officials and executives at some U.S. companies involved in IPP job-creation efforts questioned whether the fundamental premise of the program was still valid.
“A senior Russian Atomic Energy Agency official told us, in the presence of IPP program officials, in July 2007 that the program is no longer relevant,” GAO noted. “Representatives of five of the 14 U.S. companies [involved in IPP projects that] we interviewed told us that, due to Russia’s increased economic prosperity, the IPP program is no longer relevant as a nonproliferation program in that country.”
GAO said many previously shaky Russian research institutes now were pursuing commercial opportunities on their own–and many now viewed supplemental IPP salary payments as little more than a useful “marketing tool” for retaining young scientists that otherwise might emigrate to the United States or western Europe.
And in a particular irony, GAO suggested that the IPP payments might be helping Russian institutes keep scientific talent for their own weapons-related research.
In that regard, GAO noted that Russian scientists receiving supplemental salary payments for participation in part-time IPP projects were not required to sever their ties with institutes.
“[S]cientists in some cases may still be affiliated with the institutes and involved in weapons-applicable research,” it said. “This practice has the unintended consequence of allowing former Soviet Union institutes to use the IPP program as a long-term recruitment tool for younger scientists and, thereby, may perpetuate the proliferation risk posed by the scientists at these institutes.”